


baby, I'll bet it comes true

by mockturtletale



Series: tumblr made me do it [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Feelings, IT CONTINUES, Jealousy, M/M, Multi, POV Multiple, middle of the night confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1187967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s fucking complicated, being into two dudes who you don’t want to lose or hurt in any way. Taylor Hall despairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	baby, I'll bet it comes true

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of That One With Ryan and Taylor's First Kiss. 
> 
> Shoutout to the best girl, liketheroad, for always coming through for me and Taylor Hall. <3

Taylor lets Ryan drop his hand just before they emerge into the too captive audience that their teammates will be and always are, even though he really doesn't want to. 

He figures compromise is the right foot to start this thing off on, and Ryan had wanted them to wait and try to sneak back downstairs separately, so the fact that Ryan lets Taylor keep his hold on his hand for the entire sixty or so seconds it takes them to make it back to the party is huge. Taylor would always bet on Ryan being cautious and careful that way, and he totally understands the need for subtlety or whatever. But he also has precisely zero qualms about everyone in the great nation of Canada knowing that he just had his hands down Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' pants. Taylor takes pride very seriously and insists on celebrating his wins whenever and however they come. Making out with Ryan is definitely a big win, one Taylor’s been working hard for for months, so maybe he’s grinning like an idiot, maybe he has to keep wiping the palms of his hands on the thighs of his shorts because they start to sweat when he looks across the kitchen or deck or yard and sees Ryan standing there talking to someone, when he remembers that he knows what kind of sounds Ryan makes when you suck on his tongue, how it feels to have Ryan's fingernails bite into the back of his neck because Taylor's hands and mouth drove him uncaring. 

Jordan gives him a look when he reappears, and he doesn't exactly follow Taylor around for the entire rest of the afternoon, but Taylor feels eyes on his back every once in a while, and he knows without looking up that it's Jordan. 

He knows without asking that this isn't something he can get away with hiding from him. 

 

____

 

Honestly, Taylor has mostly forgotten to be nervous when the time comes for he and Jordan to head home. Jordan drives and sings along to the radio, doesn't yet start to press Taylor for information, so he's free to lounge in the passenger seat and laugh at Jordan's terrible singing voice, glance up and every now and then to look at the line of Jordan's throat and the way his hair is still wet from the pool and think “so pretty. Such a good friend.” Taylor has been really invested in getting his mouth on Ryan, but he hadn't actually thought he'd had a shot at it. Taylor has also (always) been really invested in getting his mouth on Jordan, and he definitely doesn't have a shot at that. So maybe he's doomed to a life where he gets to touch Ryan sometimes and gets to look at Jordan almost all the time. 

There are definitely worse fates that could befall a bro, and thankfully Taylor is saved from having to think about those by the distraction that is living with an often shirtless, always awesome Jordan Eberle. 

Now that Taylor gets to add 'Ryan's _everything_ in my lap' to his list of happy thoughts, it's really no wonder that when he's trailing Jordan into their apartment all he's really thinking about is how Ryan's mouth felt open and breathless; stingingly hot against his, the way Ryan had shivered in his arms when he'd gotten his hands on Taylor's bare shoulders. 

He's smiling to himself, blissfully unaware and dopily happy, but he is a young man living a life of riches right now, what with his best friends being who they are, _how_ they are, and one of them letting Taylor get all up in his space, making it pretty clear that under the right circumstances he'd be pretty open to and enthusiastic about letting Taylor get into his pants. He's distracted, is the thing, and in the back corners of his mind he knows he wasn't totally psyched about coming home alone with Jordan for some reason, but whatever that reason was, it seems pretty irrelevant for the moment. 

And that's how Jordan manages to catch him off guard even though Taylor knew this was coming. 

 

____

 

Jordan isn't stupid. Even if he hadn't done the hockey thing he probably wouldn't have been cut out for college, but that's only because he's never really cared to be book smart. Jordan prefers to work with his hands, with his body. He likes to feel it, and he's built himself a lifestyle out of listening to his body – using it to communicate. Jordan sees the world in movement, he talks through touch, and he's always been a quick study in how that's answered; what's said the same way by those he surrounds himself with.

So when he sees Taylor and Ryan coming down the stairs in Smytty's house, blush high on Taylor's cheekbones, Ryan's mouth red and dewy and ripe, it doesn't take much more than that for Jordan to put two and two together. If it did, Taylor's ripped shirt would probably do it.

Jordan isn't stupid, and he's never been stupid. He knows that he and Taylor aren't 'just' friends. They never have been. Well, maybe for a while when they first met and were too young and distracted to realize what it means to be around someone whose entire body you're constantly aware of in absolute and minute detail. But they'd both become Oilers, and they'd moved in together when they really didn't have to, and there's always been an edge to every single minute they spend alone – every second they spend in bars watching one another try half-heartedly to hit on other people.

As far as Jordan knew, they'd been waiting. He'd figured Taylor needed more time, and he hadn't been against that notion himself. They were so young still, and Jordan had had the feeling even then that whenever they did get together, it wouldn't be anything close to a short-term or short-lived thing. 

Jordan is accustomed to trusting his feelings, and Jordan is not at all accustomed to being wrong. 

Ryan had been a surprise to say the least. 

Looking back now, Jordan remembers Taylor talking about him a little too long, a little too dazedly after they'd met at the draft. But the first Jordan had seen or known of him had been the day Ryan had walked into the player's lounge before practice, still too-big hands white knuckled around the strap of his bag and his weight shifting subtly from foot to foot like he was nervous but absolutely determined not to show it. He'd been eighteen then, is only fucking nineteen now, but Jordan had sat up straight on the couch and totally forgotten about the game controller in his hand. He'd looked across the room at Ryan – at the calculating quirk of his eyebrows, the brutal bite he'd been sucking around his own bottom lip. He'd looked at Ryan's fingers, and he'd thought about what the line of his body looked like under his coat. He'd wondered what it'd feel like in his hands, trapped inside the span of his thighs. 

When he'd looked up, no one else in the room had even noticed Ryan's arrival. Bar Taylor, who was one step behind Jordan and still stripping Ryan naked with his eyes. 

The first time Jordan had looked at Ryan, he'd thought 'that boy is going to be a problem.' 

He'd thought it, and he'd trusted his intuition, but at the time he couldn't have known how right he'd be, or how it would come to affect him the way it has - because this isn't just about him. 

Actually, it isn't about him at all. 

 

____

 

"So you and Nuge, eh?" Jordan says when Taylor has his back turned to him, because maybe he is a coward. Maybe the way picturing Ryan and Taylor together (together alone; together without him) knocks the wind out of him over and over has made Jordan a coward for the first time ever. 

Taylor's bending over to grab something from the fridge, or just surveying its contents even though he already knows there's nothing in there he wants to eat as usual, because when his back goes ramrod straight and he twists sharply to face Jordan his hands are empty. 

He looks at Jordan like Jordan has announced he's ditching hockey to pursue a boyhood dream of playing in the NBA. He clears his throat and licks his lips, opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. 

Jordan helps him out, and it's probably only half with a nod to his newfound desire to be cruel to Taylor; to see his face broken up into bits and pieces of expressions meant to convey hurt or something else; anything that isn't the smooth, bright, pinkened flush of pleasure he's been wearing all afternoon. He looks young, as blissfully carefree as he'd been when Jordan had met him first, and Jordan hasn't seen him look like that in years. Now he looks like that because of Ryan. 

"You were making out with him earlier, right? When you came downstairs together it was ... it was obvious, man." 

"He - we didn't mean it to be," Taylor manages, looking almost relieved to have been able to say anything at all. Jordan _hates_ that Taylor was able to say what he has said and he hates the way he has chosen to say it. For a second his jaw locks up under a hard grind of hatred that Jordan feels briefly, sharply, specifically for Ryan.

"Well tough shit," Jordan says, wondering if it's as loud to Taylor as it is to him that it isn't hate he's feeling at all; it's a jagged, deep twist of jealousy instead. Some kind of acidic anger for how he's the one that got left out when he never is; when he couldn't care less if it happened at practice or during line changes or for a shootout or for road rooming assignments. 

"Is it ... is this going to be a big deal? Do you have a problem with this?" Taylor looks away to ask, his jaw set too, now, and Jordan wants to tear across the kitchen and sink his teeth into the newly maddeningly, constantly tempting dip of that muscle, wants to put his mouth on Taylor however and wherever it matters, so Taylor gets it, so Taylor knows how sorry he is. 

Because he is sorry. 

He's sorry he's not what Taylor wanted. He's sorry he wasn't enough. 

"No," is what Jordan says, although what he means is 'Yes. _Yes_!' 

Taylor seems skeptical, frightened even, and Jordan probably hates himself most of all. 

"It's not because he's a guy or whatever it is that you're thinking right now. You know me better than that, Taylor. It's ... he's ... he's Ryan. It's whatever." 'He's Ryan' says everything Jordan means or needs to say as far as he's concerned, but he knows Taylor won't get it; won't hear the magnitude of what that entails for Jordan. He's glad that's the case. He's relieved Taylor won't understand. 

"So we're cool? We don't need to figure this out? You're totally fine with it?" Taylor is pressing, and Jordan gets that. There's a lot on the line for him here, and Jordan won't ever be the person who makes his best friend miserable or makes him think he doesn't deserve whatever it is that will make him happy. Even if in his weaker moments; right now when he's at his weakest ever, he almost wishes he had that in him. 

"Of course. It's not even a big deal. I just ... wanted you to know that I know, I guess. It's fine. If you need to talk or whatever you know where I am." 

Jordan walks away then and Taylor doesn't try to stop him. It's for the best. It's what's best for Taylor. And for Ryan. 

Jordan walks away and shuts himself up in his bedroom at seven pm, determined to not leave this room again until morning if that'll mean he doesn't have to see that look of dumb, gorgeous delight on Taylor's face until then. 

Wrapped up in the cocoon of his covers even though it's nowhere near a cool night, Jordan lies awake and listens to Taylor move quietly around their apartment until sleep or silence comes to pull him under. 

Jordan falls asleep wondering if he'll always miss Taylor as much as he does then, that night. 

 

____

 

For hours after Taylor lets Jordan bail on him he practices taking it back. 

'Maybe there is something I need to talk about,' he thinks, but doesn't say. 

'I only figured out that I liked Ryan because I feel the same way about him as I do about you,' seems contrived; try hard. 

'Ryan is the best but so are you and I want you both because I'm a selfish, greedy asshole,' doesn't seem likely to get any of them anywhere. 

By 3am Taylor has come up with and dismissed a million ways to re-open what he never wanted to be a dialogue between him and Jordan, but it's only when at 4am it starts to seem like a potentially really bad idea that Taylor finds the frightened courage to do something about all of this and tumbles, determined, up out of bed and out into the hallway before this goes too far. 

If it's starting to seem like it might be a bad idea already he only has so long before that's all it ever seems like again, and Taylor has never met an opportunity he didn't impulsively take just to say he could and so he _did_ ; just to know he gave it his best shot. 

 

\- 

 

Jordan is sleeping when Taylor barges in, and under other circumstances he might spare a second to feel bad about waking him, but as is he only crosses the room and hesitates for all of zero seconds before he reaches out into the dark, blindly feeling for Jordan's bare shoulder so he can shake him awake by it. Not gently, because this is important; this is urgent and Taylor doesn't have time to be careful, can't learn in a moment what it means to be subtle when it comes to Jordan because even years and years spent by his side have yet to teach him how. 

"Whaa - Taylor? What's wrong?" He sounds exhausted, looks worse when Taylor turns on the bedside lamp and Jordan bolts upright squinting into the bright light of it. 

Taylor holds the breath he can't take until the weight of it starts to hurt, and he reaches to lift the covers back up over Jordan's shoulders in case he's cold. And not without totally selfish added motives either, because Jordan sleeps shirtless and Taylor can't begin to deal with that right now, not like this, when he's about to potentially (probably, almost certainly) ruin everything. 

"What if I'd kissed you instead?" 

Jordan gropes for the covers Taylor has thrust at him, shivering, and sits up straighter still, looking at Taylor wide eyed. He's definitely awake now. 

"What if what?" He asks like the English language is a foreign concept to him, and Taylor still can't even breathe, can barely look at him except for how he couldn't look away if he tried. His hair is a mess, and his cheeks are barely flushed from sleep, his mouth sleep-dewy and slick. He’s still blinking long and hard in the light, his eyelashes fluttering slowly, and Taylor is so into him it’s unreal. 

"What if it hadn't been Ryan that I kissed today. What if I'd gone to find you and asked if I could kiss you? What would you have said?" 

Jordan slumps into his pillows a little, shrinking away from Taylor. 

Taylor's heart drops like a rock through his rib cage and he's about to bail out of this room, right out of this situation - determined to pass it off as some kind of freak sleep walking incident - until Jordan grabs him by the wrist and holds on tight. Stops him, even though Taylor hadn't been brave enough to do the same earlier tonight, or last week, or three years ago when he should have. When he needed to. 

"I'd have said 'yes'," Jordan says. Says miserably. "Obviously I'd have said _'yes'_ because I've wanted to, I should have asked, I should have done something sooner but I didn't and now ..." 

"Now?" Taylor presses, trying not to sway closer to Jordan on the bed, trying not to fall forward into him or push him to share more than he's ready to because Taylor's mind is blown by this - blown by this day - but this is the one thing he won't let his impatience dictate the pace of, not for him and definitely not for Jordan. 

"Now you and Ryan are ... a you and Ryan," Jordan pulls his knees up underneath the sheets and bands his bare arms around them, sits small in a way Taylor has never seen him seem. 

"I love you and everything," Taylor says, because maybe it's not the time or the place but it's still true to a terrifyingly vast variety of degrees, "but you are such a fucking moron sometimes." 

"Um," and that's what it sounds like when even Jordan's voice gets small, "is this the part where you make fun of me for ever thinking I'd have a shot with you? Because I know you're Taylor Fucking Hall and all but I'm Jordan Fucking Eberle and more importantly I'm supposed to be your best friend, that would be very non beauty of you." 

At that Taylor has to lean in and punch Jordan hard across the shoulder, gives in to the urge to leave his hand there, warm and open, very carefully gentle on the round of it, afterward. They're hockey players, and they're conditioned to show instead of tell, to say whatever they need to say with their fingers curled determinedly inside gloves, their knuckles split apart in defense of one another. 

"Did you miss the part where I said I love you? Because I'm positive I just said so. Like five seconds ago. You couldn't have missed it, you were right here." 

It's always been a problem, how inviting Jordan's mouth gets when he pouts, but it's a legitimate life ruiner for Taylor right now. He kind of wants to throw himself off the bed and pound on the floor with his fists, he’s so frustrated. 

"I know that you love me, Hallsy. But I'm not clear on whether or not you love Ryan, and while the rest of us were doing some team bonding today you were apparently holed up somewhere letting him rip your clothes off, so forgive me if I'm having a little trouble figuring out what all of that means." 

Taylor has to grin at the memory of Ryan's impatience, and he knows his grin turns shiteating when he registers how petulantly jealous Jordan sounds but he really can’t help that at all. His life is fucking awesome. 

“Sorry, sorry,” He says, absolutely unapologetic, when Jordan glares at him, sleepy and adorable for it, but serious about it too, probably, “But if I ask you a couple questions, will you answer ‘em honestly for me? I promise you I’m not laughing at you. I swear, Ebby.” 

Looking surprised and still suspicious, Jordan nods after a beat, and Taylor’s heart thumps a little harder for the display of trust, for how Jordan might be confused as fuck right now but is still willing to follow him wherever he leads whether that’s down the ice on a breakaway that no one else could keep up with him on, or into a conversation that makes Jordan’s hands shake, has Taylor closing his palms around his knuckles just to keep them still. 

“How do you feel about me?” 

The trembles soothe from Jordan’s bones in Taylor’s hands, and he’s half smiling when he rolls his eyes. 

“I feel like you’re a moron, mostly. I feel like you’re a moron and I must be a total idiot to be in love with you, because you’re reckless and you’re impulsive and you make everything so fucking complicated and you’re a cocky asshole and what’s worse is that it’s totally warranted because you’re stupidly good at what you do and most nights I want to drag you back here and kick your ass for being such a _brat_ , but those nights have nothing on the ones when I want to drag you in here and kiss you until you’re so frustrated you beg, hold you down in this bed and show you what it’s really like to feel reckless, show you how being around you all the fucking time makes me feel. You drive me crazy and I love you and I don’t want to know what it’s like to only know half of that. I want it all.” 

When he finishes he is breathless, and if he looks surprised by what he’s just said at first, that look has nothing on the one it’s replaced by when Taylor leans in and down and sucks the knuckle of Jordan’s left index finger into his mouth, bites it gently before he lets it go. 

“And how do you feel about Ryan?” 

For the first time, Jordan hesitates. He looks down and says nothing, bides his time by playing with the sections of sheet that are caught between their hands. 

“I like Ryan,” he says finally, and the way he says it sets Taylor’s nerves at ease. Jordan’s effusiveness tends to be dealt out in touch, in meaningful looks and the way he places his body next to yours. Taylor’s still hoping against hope that he’ll remember every syllable of what Jordan just said about him because it was a big deal, it was the most Taylor has ever known him to fight to wrangle into words. But another tick to Jordan’s strange take on communication is that all the little bits and pieces of what he says out loud can tend to be kind of deafening. 

With Jordan it’s always obvious (to Taylor, at least) how much he isn’t saying, and so when he hears him say he ‘likes’ Ryan the very same way he says he’s ‘proud’ to be an Oiler, has been ‘grateful’ for every opportunity he’s ever had to represent his country, Taylor knows Jordan is saying a lot more. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Jordan says, blushing now. “He’s … he’s been so good for our team, and he’s … he’s a really great guy? He’s quiet but he’s kind, he’s thoughtful and he’s considerate and he’s like the polar opposite of you most days, except for when the two of you get anywhere within a twenty foot radius of the net, and then you’re both fucking terrors. I like how confident he is, how sure of himself he can be without making that a big deal. He’s still so young, but he’s so hungry for responsibility, so fucking capable … he’s going to be a game changer for however long he plays, wherever he ends up along the way. He’s one of the next greats, you know?” 

“Sure,” Taylor can agree with nothing but ease, “But I didn’t ask what you thought of him as a hockey player. I asked how you feel about him.” 

The way Jordan’s face scrunches up, an automatic reaction to his ever being asked a question he isn’t ready for and already prepared to answer, is nothing short of unholy levels of adorable. This conversation feels like an overtime, game winning goal high that just does not end. 

“I. The way I feel about him is - it doesn’t make sense. Before he ever said one word to me I was thinking about what it would be like to fuck him, and that’s probably a surprise to no one because he’s as hot as the fucking sun, but then he became our friend and that … that just made it worse instead of better. You’re supposed to see people differently when you know them, right? You’re supposed to see their flaws and know them well and want them less because of that, right?” Jordan speaks with big eyes, speaks with a nervous twist of his fingers and a probably subconscious shift further down the bed, closer into Taylor. “But I want him more. I always want him more and more and that doesn’t make sense.” Jordan pauses. Breathes. Looks at Taylor like he wants more than just Ryan. “But I have a feeling you get it.” 

Taylor grins. 

“Oh I get it,” he says, “and I can tell you - it doesn’t stop. I made out with him today and I’m still not even a little bit satisfied by that.” 

Taylor isn’t happy about it, but he understands, when Jordan’s face shuts down a little, at that. Shuts off from him in a way that seems inexplicable when Jordan is still sitting here, sharing his bedroom - his bed - with Taylor in the middle of the night without question, for no reason other than that Taylor showed up. 

It’s fucking complicated, being into two dudes who you also don’t want to lose or hurt in any way. Taylor Hall despairs. 

 

____

 

Jordan has always known that Taylor was a life ruiner, he’s known as much since the very first time he saw the guy shirtless and totally unapologetic about it, but this is next level callousness. This is almost cruel, and Jordan doesn’t understand why he wants to hear more, but he does. In the dimly lit, middle-of-the-night muted silence of his bedroom, he listens with rapt attention to the guy he stupidly went and fell for talking about kissing the other dude he’s fallen hard for.

“But he’s - it’s. As great as it is to make out with Ryan - and trust me; it’s life-changing - that’s still not … it’s not making out with him and making out with you, you know? It’s not even making out with him and having some kind of hope that making out with you might be a thing that could happen one day. This feeling right here is the best I’ve ever felt.” 

Only Taylor Hall, Jordan thinks despairingly, and he’d be saying it out loud, swearing the same sentiment audibly and vehemently, if it wasn’t for how he’s reaching for Taylor’s shirt and pulling him to him instead, kissing his frustration into Taylor’s mouth without want for a better way to do it. Taylor’s tongue is quick to respond, quick to soothe, and things quickly bypass merely mollifying when he groans low in the back of his throat and sits up on his knees to push the covers off of Jordan and out of the way, moves to climb over them and up onto Jordan instead. 

“But we. We should like -” Jordan can’t believe he finally has Taylor in his bed, in his fucking lap, and is trying to talk to him to verbalize anything other than a cordial invitation for Taylor to fuck him out of his mind, but such is the draw of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, even when he’s not in the room. “We can’t do this and then … what about Ryan?” 

Taylor only laughs, the sound muffled and buzzing against Jordan’s Adam’s apple. 

“Exactly,” is all he says, and Jordan trusts him. Really and truly trusts him in ways that don’t only pertain to the way the less Taylor says, the quicker he is to make short work of their clothes.

 

____

 

Later, much later, Taylor lies next to Jordan in his bed with cooling sweat making his skin glisten and tells Jordan with brightly sparkling eyes that he’s absolutely confident that Ryan will be nothing short of totally on board with what happened. What will, he hopes, happen again very soon and with an extra participant. 

Jordan trusts him, and Jordan hopes too. 

 

____ 

 

Ryan is on the phone when Taylor lets them into his apartment, and Jordan isn’t jealous, not really. 

“Yeah, for sure. Oh hey, I have to go” Ryan says to whoever he’s talking to, and when he stands up from the couch and turns to face them Jordan has no idea why he was ever unsure about this, because Ryan is grinning at them like they just scored a timely goal. 

“No, my friends are here,” he says, still smiling as he adds a goodbye and pockets his phone, slipping both hands into his back pockets and going up onto his toes, a nervous gesture he hasn’t fully grown out of yet. 

“Hi,” Ryan says, and it might start out as shy, but it ends on a high note, loud and pleased when Taylor crosses the room to scoop him up into his arms, picking him up in a hug and pressing his cold face into the crook of Ryan’s neck. He’s wearing a really low v-neck tshirt, and Jordan can’t wait to get it off him. 

“Hey,” Jordan says, smiling when both Taylor and Ryan reach out a hand to him. 

 

____  
____  
____  
____

**Author's Note:**

> Not true, not all details exactly correct etc. etc. etc.


End file.
